Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

In retrospect, given the broader historical context, there is an air of inevitability about the flow of events in this story, as there is about a great river. A prostrate France, having been overrun by Nazi Germany in a mere six weeks in 1940 and further humiliated in meekly ceding Indochina to the advancing Japanese, sought after 1945 to reestablish colonial control, at a time when the whole edifice of the European imperial system was crumbling; how could she possibly hope to succeed? Add to this the ruthless discipline, tenacity, and fighting skill of the Viet Minh, and the comparative weakness of non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists—before and after 1954—and it becomes seemingly all but impossible to imagine a different result than the one that occurred.